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“The lessons you take from your travels across novel-land this month will serve you well throughout the rest of your life. You will walk away from the escapade with a mischievous sense of boldness and an increased confidence in your creative abilities. You will read differently, write differently, and for better or worse, you will begin seeing the world with the ever-hungry eyes of a novelist.” – Chris Baty

The first draft, eh? A bit daunting isn’t it? Remember, every writer you’ve ever loved started out at this exact point — and it scared the crap out of the lot of them.

Here we are, looking out over the vast uncharted territory of your novel. Some of you have map and compass and heavy-duty all-weather gear — others just have crazed expressions and a willingness to roam in the wilderness.

Enjoy the view. You’re looking for quantity not quality. This isn’t the place for perfect grammar or well-constructed sentences — it’s where you go stomping through the mud.

Leave your inner-editor at home. In fact, hand over your inner-editor right now for safe-keeping. Place a comment at the end of this post, relinquishing your inner-editor and saying exactly how you expect it to be treated whilst you’re busy writing your novel.

Don’t worry, you can have it back afterwards. That’s why I said ‘leave it at home’ and not ‘leave it face-down in a ditch.’ After the first draft, your inner-editor comes to the fore.

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A bit back I asked you to see if you could guess what it was about the opening lines from different novels that made them so wonderful.

The answer is voice – that’s what pulls you in and makes you want to keep reading.

It’s not something concrete that you can always put your finger on, but it is what will rock your reader’s socks every time if you have it.

It’s also your newfound secret weapon for making it through writing sessions with maximum quality and word count.

There are two main voices in the novel — the voice of the protagonist and the voice of the narrator.

There’s also the implied narrator (the impression of the author that the reader gets from reading) but you don’t need to worry about that just yet — not if you want to get to the end of a writing session with your sanity intact.

It’s easiest to judge the effectiveness of Voice in first-person novels for obvious reasons.

If the author manages to pull it off, like a method-actor, and convince you that the voice is authentic then you’ll keep reading.

You can also use it just as effectively in other novels, as was shown in the extracts that I posted up here.

Voice is a big subject, and there’s loads that I could say about it, but I’d still be writing about it long after the cows came home.

So instead I’m going to give you a VERY SIMPLE technique to use.

A strong voice will keep you reading like nothing else. We love stories and we love to be told them.

Forget what you hear about “Show, don’t tell” (it’s good advice but often misunderstood and gets in the way of your natural storytelling ability) — when you were little did you ever say “Please SHOW me a story”?!

So, that’s what I want you to do. I want you to TELL the story. And I want you to tell it using the most powerful voice that you have — your own.

For first-person novels: Unless you already feel like you’re the main character and speak like them and in fact ARE them (in which case the men-in-white-coats are standing by), you’re going to have to wing it.

Instead of pretending to be the main character and trying to put on their voice parrot fashion, I want you to imagine that YOUR VOICE is the voice of the narrator.

For third-person novels etc: For the next few days, YOU are Charles Dickens.

Forget about trying to sound arty or interesting or literary, just tell the story in your own voice, in exactly the same way that you’d tell it to your friends.

Whatever type of novel you’re writing, put down what you’d say if you were telling this story to someone close to you.